Will Gruit Enhance Your Sex Life?

All you dudes pounding double IPAs, triple IPAs, wet-hopped beers, dry-hopped beers, black IPAs, white IPAs? Raise a glass, because that might be all you can raise. According to beer lore, hops cause impotence.

Is the lore true? No. The infamous phytoestrogenic compounds in hops are in too small quantities, even in the hoppiest beers, to affect male erectile function. That said, there are plenty of reasons to push hops out of bed: Their trendiness in the last 10 years has flooded the market with unbalanced, largely undrinkable beers that are overly bitter, cloying, and exhausting. Thankfully, the backlash has begun. Welcome gruit, an ancient style of unhopped beer that is suddenly making a comeback after being dead for hundreds of years.